What Is Difficult About International Marriage? It Is Difficult To Get Passports!!

I married my husband who has Belgian nationality and now lives overseas. This time, I would like to share the experiences I have experienced and the difficulties of getting married to someone with a non-Japanese nationality, which I feel from the story of a friend who has also married internationally.

Maybe some may disagree with your marriage!!

Nervous feeling about countries you don’t know

If you are married to someone other than a Japanese national, your family and relatives may oppose you over your nationality. One of the biggest reasons seems to be anxiety because they don’t know the country of the other party. I was not opposed to my husband’s nationality. However, my grandmother who suffered from dementia seemed to have been anxious without knowing the difference between Belgium and Vietnam. Also, when I hear about friends who have married people from Asian countries other than Africa, South America, and Japan, because they are still a poor country, they don’t know what kind of people they grew up with.

Feeling your children might go farther

In particular, she is worried that she will go to a distant country if she wants to marry a foreign national, and there are family and relatives who oppose it. In many cases, women move and go to men when they get married, so if men live abroad, women go abroad. Recently, the trend of saying “Children should take care of their parents after retirement” is no longer as strong as before, but it still says that children will go far, go somewhere beyond the sea Many people dislike it.

Problems having a foreign last names

They don’t understand that foreign last name

In Japan, married couples are not allowed to have their surnames. If you want to have a last name for an international marriage, you must submit a name change notification. I personally didn’t agree or disagree with my married couple’s surname, so I had a lot of trouble before marriage, but eventually decided to have my husband and surname aligned. Getting a foreign surname is a nuisance when telling a surname by phone. For example, if it is a name familiar to Japanese people such as white and green, there may be no problem, but our surname is not like that, so when you make a reservation by phone, for example, state the name but they may not understand that name part. Therefore, I sometimes use maiden names.

Wrong spelling

If Japanese use not Japanese names, they often say that the katakana notation is wrong when registering something. This seems to be common for people who have married internationally. If it can’t be helped, it might be understandable, but if it’s repeated many times, it can be unpleasant. In particular, New Year’s cards may be wrong, and this is not easy to fix even if you talk to the person every year.

Getting passports

Proving spelling is difficult

As soon as I got married, I got a passport with a new surname. However, since the alphabetical representation of the last name was not Hebon, it was necessary to prove the alphabetic representation of the new last name. For example, if your name is White, it is originally White but Japan is Hebon, so it will be written as Howaito. Therefore, you must prove that it is White.

They way to prove it

I was asked to show my husband’s passport to prove it. However, because my husband was working in the UK at that time, he was not in Japan and was unable to present his husband’s passport. When I talked about it, I was told, “Please send me your passport by mail.” Since international mail is highly likely to be lost, it is unthinkable to mail important things like passports overseas. When I talked like that, I was told I may not be able to get it.

Birth certificate might work instead

At that time, it was immediately after the marriage registration was filed, and the marriage registration entry certificate (a copy of all documents submitted along with the marriage registration was stamped with the stamp of the municipal office) was at hand. Among them, there is my husband’s birth certificate, and of course his last name is written on the birth certificate. When I asked the receptionist if a birth certificate was acceptable, I was told to bring the original. Since the original was submitted along with the marriage registration, I was told that it was at hand as a certificate of entry for marriage registration. The marriage certificate is an official document that can be submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and certified by the Japanese government. When the person in charge said, “Whether the country accepts official documents, can the prefecture accept it?”, A discussion was held with about three people, and as a result, it was said that it was still acceptable.

Linguistic problems

However, there was one problem with birth registration. My husband’s nationality is Belgium, so the birth notification is of course Dutch. When I said, “Birth registration is written in Dutch, but it’s in the original language, isn’t there any problem?” He told me to bring a birth certificate issued in Japanese. Which country other than Japan will issue birth certificates in Japanese? By this time, I was very tired and asked, “Do you think Belgium will issue birth certificates in Japanese?” As a result, we brought together a Japanese translation of the birth certificate.

Had to declare about my maiden name

This was still a mystery because I had already changed my husband’s last name, but before applying for a passport, I wrote a letter on a conventional notepaper saying “I swear I will not return my last name in my passport to my maiden name” It was. I say many times, but in the first place I am a “rename”, so my maiden name is not my real surname. So you can’t get a passport with your maiden name. I think this is the same for everyone who has married and changed their last name. Nevertheless, it was written in a single stroke because it was an international marriage. This still doesn’t make sense, or maybe just the county where I applied for a passport, but if you really need this oath, let anyone who changed their last name write a stroke I think it should be. If this oath is necessary only for international marriages, I think it is rather discrimination against international marriages.

Just enjoy what is happening

When applying for a passport, it was necessary to go home once and translate the birth certificate of the master, so it took half a day and remembered that I was worried that I could not get a passport for the first time in my life. It is. However, if you think about it, your ID card and insurance card in Japan are all in katakana, and the ID card that proves your alphabet is only a passport … I have a hard time. However, the most important thing in marriage is to be with someone who wants to walk life with this person, so some barriers and hardships can be easily regarded as some recreation. Without power, I believe that marriage is not possible in the first place.